Generational Dynamics World View

[Kinser79]

(08-29-2017, 08:26 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: North Korea has on the order of ten nuclear missiles, China has hundreds, and Russia has over a thousand.  If the numbers were the main thing that mattered, you'd be most worried about Russia.  Yet, you ignore Putin just like people ignored Hitler.

It makes sense to focus on North Korea right now because that's the problem that can be solved - but only for a short time.  If we got North Korea to give up its nukes, that would set an example on proliferation.  Iran wouldn't try to get them, we could start putting pressure in Pakistan and India, and eventually we might even pressure China, France, England, and Russia to give up theirs.

Putin can see that possibility, which is why he is doing everything possible to prevent the US from taking care of the North Korean nuclear problem.  China can probably see it too, but they are actually close enough to be severely threatened by North Korea, so they figure any future steps the US might take can be dealt with later.

The fact that there are bigger threats around in the form of Russia and China does not mean we shouldn't bother to deal with the lesser threats like North Korea.

There are a few problems with this.

1.  When it comes to nuclear strikes numbers don't matter.  Even if we had a Star Wars system that could knock out most of the missiles the solution is to send up one nuke with dozens or even hundreds of dummy missiles.
2.  Vladimir Putin is not Hitler.  Not politically, and not on the international stage.  Chechenya has been part of Russia since before the US even existed.  Same with the Crimea.  Indeed even Belarus and Ukraine could be considered similar to Texas and California breaking off the US.

Now as to what I agree with.  Putin isn't particularly interested in mucking about in Korea.  Firstly it is the PRC's client state, and secondly any military actions would require the Russians to send their forces across the Transsiberian which in many places is still just a single track.  It was and still is a logistical nightmare.  Also Putin doesn't want to push around the Chinese too much.  Russia and China are not friends and haven't been friends for centuries.  The aboration was the friendliness between Mao and Stalin, and even then the diplomatic relations were tepid at best.

Russia and China can pose bigger threats than the DPRK, but unlike the DPRK they are unlikely to actually become hot-war threats.  China relies on selling the US cheap plastic shit to get dollars to buy resources to sell more cheap plastic shit.  It is the basis of their industrial might and China is critically short on oil and other strategic resources.

Russia has not historically and is unlikely to attempt to expand their sphere of influence.  They have difficulty maintaining what they have, furthermore they have a monocultural economy which means that bringing on other oil and gas would cripple their economy.

As for getting the DPRK to give up their nukes--unlikely to happen.  Apart from China no one wants to trade with them and they don't really produce much of anything so they have to have something to hold the world hostage for rice and penicillin.

I would venture to guess Iran already has nukes, the question is do they have a delivery system.  Saudi Arabia likely also has some nukes too, but in limited numbers.  We know Israel does.  So in the Middle East you have a standoff between Jew, Sunni Muslim and Shia Muslim.  Pakistan is only really a threat to India and vise versa.

The only real external military threat to America right now is the DPRK.  China and Russia are simply not interested and everyone else has other enemies that are far closer to home.  This should be expected since our 4T is likely to be entirely internal since the DPRK can be run over in a week even if they do fire of a few missiles without China jumping to their rescue which is economic suicide for the Chinese.  And love them or hate them the Chinese are not crazy.  They are coldly rational just like the Russians.